Many countries including the United States have enacted laws making the possession or distribution of certain material such as child pornography illegal but do not use filtering software.

There are many free and commercially available software programs with which a user can choose to block offensive websites on individual computers or networks such as to limit a childs access to pornography or violence. See Contentcontrol software.

Leisure activities

The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers and humorrelated Usenet groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Overmillion people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas.

The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other websites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries use of the Internet this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity.

One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fastpaced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to firstperson shooters from roleplaying games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet.

While online gaming has been around since the s modern modes of online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer to which players of games would typically subscribe. Nonsubscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games.